Movies- great cultural ambassador- not

so I passed enough classes that I don't think they'll kick me out. And I've been watching movies...

And I was a bad bad bunny and went out and bought a pair of shoes. Girl can not live in doc's and sneakers and flipflops alone. Nope, she needs black heels too.

Mine are that kinda retro 40's style, you know, with the small rounded toe, plenty of wiggle room, and a nice pointy heel. T-strappy maryjanes. not really buckling or strapping, they have elastic. And a 3+ inch heel. Just what I needed. There's nothing like towering above the seething masses. Now if only I could get jeans with tiny knees and a 38 inch inseam, so my feet weren't on display for everyone in them. I mean, shoes are cute and all, but... I really don't like the way it looks when my ankles are poking out of my pants above my shoes. And I can only tug my jeans down so much before things start sliding out the other end.

But that's not what I want to talk about this time. Nope.

Some of you might have realised by now that, like a silly freshman, I am living in student housing. Being an international student, they let us have self catered housing, I guess they figure if we're able to find our way here, we should be able to feed ourselves too? I don't know.

Anyway, I live in a sort of appartment complex with all these other international students, mostly fully enrolled, but the occasional year abroad type too. Right now I think I'm the only American. There are maybe 2 others in the court who speak english as their first language. We all watch TV in the common room.

NZ not having a huge entertainment industry, most of the programming is imported. Most english language TV comes from the states. Movies too. Being the Official Representative Example of America, I get all the silly questions, usually showing up while watching some movie, like "is american high school really like that" or... "american dating is like that?" or "is america really like the movies" or... yeah, you get the idea.

Being asked if the family on malcom in the middle is like a real american family threw me a bit, tho..

Sitting at home, back where everyone has *some* real idea of what the US is like, it's tough to imagine people taking the actions of movie characters so seriously, I mean, I don't expect to turn a corner and run into some scary dead guy on a screaming dragon monster who's chasing some short furry kid with a ring while I'm here, and I didn't expect to run into crazy men dressed up like knights while I was in the UK, but maybe most of the world doesn't think like that.

I'm sure if I watched, say, Fox news, I would have expected to be shot getting off the plane in Cairo. Or catch the Hiv from the falafel I had for dinner that night ($.20). Or to run into hot manly secret agents in london. Or have the tube station explode around me. I guess maybe if you don't have any other information to work with, you go with what you see. Movies and Sitcoms being the world's fox news on the US is a scary idea.

Which reminds me, I really need to read up on NZ history- I keep running into all these things that I just don't get. And that's not even touching the whole "day off for queens birthday" thing. I mean, I've been in the country for, what, 4 months? 5? and I don't even know why they're a commonwealth, not a colony, or whatever, what it's been. I mean, if you don't know what someplace has been, how can you have any kind of clue what the people there think?

Ok, see... (wandering again, I know) I run into people who've been here, right? For, oh, 3 months, or 6, or whatever, as travellers, working, or doing the semester abroad thing. The things I hear from them are, like, "there's lots of cool stuff to see" or "the people are really nice" or "there's really good pot, you should smoke it *all*".

Very rarely, if at all, do they make any kind of comment on the way NZ seems to be, well, kinda determinedly backwards. And it's not a bad thing. It's just... Here, at this school, anyway, there seems to be a lot of emphasis on science. Across all the campuses, unless I've missed something. I mean, you *can* do a fine art degree in wellington, but... they seem very geared toward science. And not just any science. It's a lot of ag science. Animal breeding, genetics, botany, all leading to very set areas.

Someone told me a friend of theirs had moved here, loved it, said it was just like the states in the 1950's. He thought they meant fashion-wise. It's not that, though. It's more a... I don't know, standard of living, certainly, tho that's changing. It is kind of a time warp, though. I think it's the available goods. At home, for example, there are what? 50 different brands of salad dressing? in like 20 flavors? here there's maybe 5 brands, in 4 or 5 flavors. Don't buy the domestic ranch dressing- it tastes like they made it in miracle whip- then added sugar. People in my classes couldn't understand why I'd want *frozen* brocolli, for bob's sake.

It's like someone built a time machine and grabbed NZ 60 years ago, and is trying now to force them to catch up. And they don't want to.

But yeah... The kids from japan are easy, but what do I tell the rest of them when they ask "is america really like that" when we're watching some crazy movie?

j.